


Hope on Fire

by sarcasticsra



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Everybody Lives, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, F/F, F/M, M/M, Nathan's POV, Polyamory, Snippets
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-14
Updated: 2014-12-01
Packaged: 2018-02-23 21:25:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2556260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarcasticsra/pseuds/sarcasticsra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just this once, everybody lives. Nathan reflects on how they all fit together.</p><p>(A collection of scenes/snippets from an 'Everybody Lives!' AU I started but will probably never properly finish.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nathan/Jessica

**Author's Note:**

> So these have been kicking around my hard drive for a while now. All the scenes in and of themselves are done; it's just that they're pretty standalone. I will probably never get around to filling in all the cracks, but I thought I would share what I have.

Nathan’s surprised to find her in the library this late; he thought he was the only one who made—not a habit, _habits are dangerous, Nathan_ , and he hears that in Harold’s voice—but an idiosyncrasy, maybe, of showing up here in the middle of the night.

“Jessica?” he says quietly.

She startles slightly, gracing him with a small smile as soon as she glances over. “Hi,” she says. “Coffee?” she asks, gesturing to the French press Grace convinced Harold to keep handy. It’s sitting next to the hot plate.

“Sure,” he says, and she moves to get him a mug before he can even head in that direction. 

She presses the coffee into his hands just a moment later. “Cream, no sugar.”

“You know me well,” he says, taking a sip. It’s good, quality coffee—Harold doesn’t buy anything else—and she’s added just enough cream, which surprises him again. “Perfect, thank you,” he tells her, taking one of the other chairs. They sit in companionable silence, and Nathan watches her watching him while they both pretend to be watching nothing at all.

He always uses one and a half of the little creamers they have, something that seems to drive Harold mildly crazy—Nathan would be lying if he said that didn’t have at least a little bit to do with why he likes his coffee that way—but until this moment, he would have bet money on Harold being the only one to know that, and even then, just because they’ve known each other so long. He might have included John, ever-present, always observing, trying to figure things out—except he’s far more wrapped up in unraveling Harold’s secrets than his. Grace, on the other hand, actually sometimes forgets people have preferences for coffee. She’ll drink any kind, any way, enjoying a crappy cup of instant Maxwell House almost as much as the expensive whole beans Harold habitually buys. He’s always thought she likes it as an experience more than she does an actual beverage.

Jessica, though… people are her business in much the same way they’re his, he thinks, so maybe he shouldn’t be surprised. He was wrong, what feels like eons ago, when he said that Harold doesn’t understand human nature; he should have specified he doesn’t understand human _details_ , not the way he and Jessica do.

He _has_ noticed that, the quiet ways she takes care of them all, the way John looks at her with an awed light in his eyes, the same look he’s been aiming more frequently at Harold. Nathan supposes John thinks he’s being secretive about it, but he’s pretty sure they’ve all just been politely pretending they haven’t noticed—except for Harold. Nathan is about ninety percent certain Harold _actually_ hasn’t noticed, because that’s yet another detail he would never have accounted for.

“So what brings you out here so late at night?” she eventually asks, probably because she can tell he’s about to.

“I do this sometimes,” he says, instead of turning the question back on her. John would have done that. So would Harold. Grace would have skipped the conversation entirely. “It’s quiet. It’s a good place to think. Reflect.”

“Weigh the scales,” she adds, and her gaze shifts briefly to the list of the people they couldn’t quite manage to help. It’s a long list, but its counterpart is getting much longer.

“Yes,” he says.

“I thought you might,” she says, smiling again. “Harold has it committed to memory, Grace doesn’t dwell, and John has other demons that take priority right now. This list is for you. And me.”

He watches her for another moment. “How is John doing?”

She laughs, a pretty sound, warm and appealing. “That was _not_ subtle.”

“I’m not at my best,” he says, protesting, but he cracks a grin. “It’s three in the morning.”

She grins back. “John’s doing well, actually. This is helping. I’m helping, Grace is helping, you’re helping. _Harold_ is helping.”

“Harold’s helping kind of a lot.”

She stifles a yawn, but she still looks perfectly cheerful. “It’s actually not that surprising,” she says. “John’s always had this need to be kind of… consumed, whether by work or love or whatever. And I get it—Harold’s got a certain gravitational force that takes over when you’re not expecting it. Almost _because_ you’re not expecting it.” She pauses, taking another sip from her cup, before adding, “Besides, John and Grace have a lot in common.”

“They both prefer to _know_ than _say_ , that’s for sure,” Nathan says, shaking his head. “It’s like you’re missing half the conversation because part of it’s in their own secret language.”

“They say it all with their eyes. They’re very expressive people, the both of them, although John’s been conditioned to bottle it up whenever he can.”

“So how long have you known?”

“Oh, since the beginning,” she says. “He told me.”

“Really?” That surprises him.

“Well, as soon as he realized. Conditioning and all.”

That doesn’t. “Did that bother you?”

“No, it didn’t.” She looks thoughtful. “I like to think it’s because of his honesty and forthrightness in telling me—that’s a certain kind of bravery he hasn’t always had—but part of me can’t help but wonder if it’s because I’m in a similar boat.”

Nathan groans, only half jokingly. “Don’t tell me _you’re_ in love with Harold now too.”

She laughs again. “Nathan, I didn’t get up at two in the morning to wait here for _Harold_.”

It takes longer than it should, but when the penny drops, Nathan freezes. Suddenly the room seems tiny, reduced to the four square feet around them. Everything is in sharp focus, and for the longest moment he can only look at her, feeling like his heart is caught in his throat. “Jessica,” he says, quiet. “You can do _so_ much better than me.” 

She smiles again, like it’s a secret she’s sharing with him, and he decides he wants to discover each and every way he can make her smile like that again. “That’s funny,” she says. “I’ve heard that line before. It must be my type.”

There’s a beat of silence. “Is it okay if I kiss you?” he finally asks, because if he doesn’t, he’s going to kick his own ass for the rest of his life.

“Only if you plan to do it in the next two seconds. Otherwise I’m going to get there first.”

They both move at the same time, abandoning their coffee and standing quickly; she kisses like he thought she would, playful and sweet, full of confidence and passion. He wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her in closer, and they stay like that for what feels both like eons and barely any time at all.

“How is this going to work?” he asks her once they break apart, and she grins but doesn’t go for the obvious joke. He laughs anyway, and she kisses him again.

“I’m not actually sure,” she says. “I think we can set our own rules. I do love John.”

“And John also loves Harold.”

“Does Harold know that yet, by any chance?”

“Well,” he says, in his driest tone, “considering it took an all-seeing, all-knowing sapient computer program to get him to even _talk_ to Grace…”

“Does that mean we have to sit Harold down and explain using small words, or somehow convince the Machine to play matchmaker again?”

“Both of those options are terrifying in very different ways.”

She laughs. “Maybe Grace will have a better idea.”

That makes him curious. “What did Grace have to say about all this, by the way?”

“As you might have guessed, she hasn’t actually _said_ anything,” Jessica says, grinning, but she pulls a folded up piece of paper out of her jacket pocket. “But I found this taped to my coffee cup one morning.”

He sits back down and unfolds the paper; it’s a quick, rough sketch, but still recognizably John gazing at Harold, looking at him like he hung the moon. There’s a phrase in French scrawled under it in Grace’s loopy handwriting, and he’s pretty sure it translates to _this is not a love story_.

“I see she approves,” Nathan says, amused.

“As only Grace could,” she agrees, moving to stand behind him so she can look at it over his shoulder. He cranes his neck to glance up at her, and she grins down at him, obviously just as amused as he is. They kiss again, and she twists around so she can slide onto his lap. They keep that up for a few more minutes, reveling in the newness of each other, until she pulls back, breathing heavily. “We should get to bed.”

“It is late,” he agrees, even though sleep is the furthest thing from his mind at the moment.

She gives him another one of her secret smiles, leaning down so she can whisper in his ear. “I said _bed_ , Nathan. Not _sleep_.”

He kisses her breathless again. “Then what exactly are we waiting for?” he asks, grinning.

They extract themselves long enough to make it out of the library, carefully locking it up behind them. He takes her hand as they walk down the sidewalk—it’ll be a few blocks before they can safely hail a cab—and makes a list of all the secrets they’re going to share.


	2. Nathan/Shaw and Shaw/Cole

Shaw and Cole fit into the team with all the grace of a sledgehammer colliding with drywall: loud, messy, and leaving a gaping hole behind. Admittedly, that kind of debris usually signals construction, so he can only hope it’s going to result in a better, stronger structure. 

Nathan may have let the metaphor get away from him a little bit.

He knows Shaw is wary. That’s part of the reason he’s still awake, sitting down in the living room with her, enjoying a bottle of fine scotch. Everyone else in the house—and it is just the ‘house’, now, even if it started its life as another one of Harold’s many safehouses—is asleep.

“So you’ve got to settle a bet,” she says, taking a drink from her glass. “You and Jessica—that’s happening, right?”

He raises an eyebrow at her. “That’s happening,” he says.

She whistles low. “Are you just hoping Reese doesn’t find out?”

“Oh, he knows,” Nathan says with a smirk. “Just like Grace and Jessica know about him and Harold.”

She lets out a bark of laughter. “Excellent. Cole owes me double.”

“We do like to provide a service.”

She eyes him up and down for a minute. Nathan feels obscurely scrutinized and appraised at the same time—it’s weirdly a turn on, too. “So everything—it’s some kind of arrangement?”

“You could say that.”

“Just how flexible is this arrangement?”

“Depends on the person,” he says. “John’s isn’t—Jessica and Harold are it for him. Harold’s and Jessica’s could be, but it’s doubtful, the way they fall in love. Grace and I are a little more open.”

“Okay, so here’s my real question,” she says, standing slowly. “I’d really like to get laid right now. You seem like you’d be pretty good at that. Any chance of that happening?”

He stands as well, not crowding her, because it’s pretty obvious that she wants to make the first move. That has never been a problem for him. “I think there’s a pretty damn good chance, yeah.”

They only barely make it to her room.

\---

Sam’s already left when he wakes up, pulling on a robe and heading out to the kitchen. Breakfast is still ongoing, from the noise, and by the amused looks he gets as soon as he steps into the kitchen, last night’s rendezvous is not exactly a secret. 

Well, that explains it. Sam is sitting on the counter, eating some bacon, wearing only his shirt. Given their size difference, it’s more than enough to cover her, but he can’t resist the chance to needle her a little.

“Harold keeps each room well-stocked with robes,” he tells her mildly. “This place is like his own personal hotel. You don’t want to make him sad, do you?”

Harold glares at him from where he’s absently checking seventy-eight different things on his laptop. John smirks as he gives Harold his tea.

“I think he’s managing to survive,” she drawls, looking almost amused, for her.

Jessica is also smirking as she hands him a cup of coffee, which settles him. They _have_ talked about this previously, the idea that he was free to see other people as well if he so chose, but it’s good to have that confirmation that she’s okay with it. He smiles at her and brushes her hand with his when he takes the mug from her.

Cole and Grace arrive then, at the same time—Grace is the closest thing they have to an ambassador. Even Sam liked her right away. She’s been slowly easing them into the messy tangle of people and pathos that they’ve stumbled upon.

Except Nathan knows he’s miscalculated the second Cole spots Sam in his shirt; his eyes go big, then blank, and his entire demeanor shifts—from unsure to rigid, inflexible. Given the relaxed way Sam is leaning against his shoulder, it’d be almost funny, their utter role reversal, if it didn’t make Nathan feel like a complete asshole.

\---

He catches Cole alone in the study. “Hey,” he says, and Cole goes rigid again. He doesn’t say anything, so Nathan continues: “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

There’s a beat of awkward silence before Cole finally speaks up. “Don’t worry about it. There’s nothing to know.”

Nathan lets that sink in. “You should tell her.”

“I’m pretty obviously not her type,” he says, standing. “So I think I’ll try _not_ telling her. I think that’ll work out better for everyone.” He leaves the room without glancing back.

\---

“So Cole’s in love with you,” Nathan tells her.

She sighs and sits up in the bed. “Yeah, I know.”

“You haven’t known for long,” he says.

“No,” she says. “The clusterfuck you guys pulled us out of—the way he got all stupid, risking his life for me, almost getting himself killed. I saw the way he was looking at me after. I’m not great at the emotions game, but I can put two and two together.”

“Not great at the emotions game? See, told you you’d fit right in.”

She snorts. “You’re all basically fucking each other and you think you still qualify?”

“You don’t know what we had to go through to convince Harold that John wanted him.” He shakes his head. “There are some conversations you’re just not prepared to have.” At that, he gives her a pointed look. “Like maybe the one about your partner being in love with you when you don’t return the feelings.”

She pauses just long enough that he lets out a low whistle.

“You _do_ return his feelings.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Okay, you return _some_ feelings. Maybe you’re not in love with him—you care about him, he’s the most important person to you. Those are still pretty substantial feelings, Sam. And if he knows you, which he does, and he loves you, which he does, that’s probably all he wants.”

“You think that’s all he wants, huh?”

“Well, and maybe he’d like to have sex with you—you’re very good at that.” He grins and she smacks him on the shoulder, not nearly as hard as she could.

“You’d better be right about this, Ingram,” she tells him.

\---

Cole finds him a couple days later. He walks into the kitchen, walks out, and walks back in again—about three times in total. He’s about to start on his fourth round-trip when Nathan says, “Not to interrupt your pacing, but I could use a hand.”

“Oh, sure,” says Cole, actually making it to the middle of the kitchen this time. “What’d you need me to do?”

“All those ingredients grouped there?” he says, pointing to a corner of the island. “They need to be mixed together.”

“I can handle that,” says Cole, moving to his task. They work in not-quite-companionable silence before Cole finally breaks down and says, “Sam told me about the conversation you had. How you helped… everything.”

“I figured she would,” he says, breaking up the ground turkey more thoroughly in the pan.

“Um, so, thanks,” Cole continues. “I’ve always known Sam probably wouldn’t ever return my feelings, you know, romantically and everything, but it’s nice knowing that she likes me in her way, and that’s… that’s all I really need, you know? Maybe that sounds pathetic or whatever—”

“No, it sounds like you understand her, and that’s pretty important when you love someone.”

“Right.” Cole smiles. “Anyway, we talked about everything, obviously, and we decided, if you and she… well, that’d be okay with me. If it’d be okay with you. And it’s okay with her, obviously.”

That surprises him. “You’re both sure about that?”

“Yeah. I mean, I guess it’s not really the usual or anything, but nothing about our lives, and that includes everybody who lives in this house, is exactly the usual, so…”

“You have a point there,” Nathan says, smiling.


	3. Grace/Zoe

Zoe Morgan is a force to be reckoned with, in Nathan’s considered opinion. He likes her; they all like her, really, when she strides into their path in four-inch heels, making deals and toppling empires with a few phone calls, doing what it is she does best: fixing problems. 

He’s pretty sure she likes them, too, but it’s more than obvious that Grace is her favorite.

Sure, she flirts with Sam and John in equal measure, teases Harold and Michael over the phone, shoots the shit with him and Jessica, but it’s Grace she takes out to tea, or to the theatre, Grace she lets her hair down with, slips off the heels for—relaxes with, if only for a little while.

Grace, for her part, obviously adores Zoe, which is not a surprise to Nathan. He happens to spot her coming home late one night, when he’s wandered downstairs for a late night snack. They kiss goodnight and Grace walks in, a dreamy, faraway expression on her face, and Nathan smiles.

“Good date?” he asks her.

“Grand gestures,” she says, smiling, and disappears up the stairs.

He chuckles to himself. Describe Zoe Morgan in two words or less, he thinks.


	4. Root/Shaw

“What do you do when your girlfriend-type significant other is into a crazy person?” Michael asks him out of the blue.

“The crazy person being neither you nor me, I take it,” Nathan says, leaning back in his chair.

“Root,” he says. “Ever since everything went down with the Machine, they’ve found themselves thrown together again and again… and I think Sam’s starting to like it.”

“You’re sure she hasn’t liked it ever since Root threatened to torture her with an iron?”

Michael shudders. “I try not to think about that.”

Nathan snorts. “I don’t know that we can do anything about it,” he says. “Except talk to Sam, if it really bothers you. Does it?”

“It doesn’t bother you? Can we even trust Root?”

“I think we already do,” Nathan points out.

Michael gives him a look like he may have suddenly changed his mind about him not being the crazy person, so Nathan just raises a pointed eyebrow at him. After a moment of skepticism, that look recedes, replaced with one of deep contemplation.

“Are you jealous?” Nathan asks curiously, while he’s thinking about that.

“What?” Michael blinks, obviously caught off guard. “Why would—I’m not jealous of _you_.”

“I don’t think it’s really the same thing.”

“Hey,” Michael says, as sharp as he ever gets, “Sam cares about you.”

“I know that,” Nathan says, smiling a little. “Calm down. You have to see it’s different, though, right?”

“I guess,” Michael admits, sounding reluctant.

“So? Jealous?”

“No,” he says, after a beat. “It’s not that. I just… I’m not sure Root means any of this.”

Nathan is silent for a few seconds, deciding. “I’m pretty sure she does,” he says at last. “And that’s the answer to your question, too. No, it doesn’t bother me, because I think she means it even more than she thinks she does.”

\---

The crisis—attack, that’s the word Nathan really wants to use, that’s what this feels like—is over, at least in and of itself. The aftermath, naturally, is just beginning.

Jessica is the busiest, as the team nurse—Sam’s not in much of a position to help, probably the most injured of all of them, dealing with a gunshot wound, a couple broken ribs, and a nasty burn down her right arm, but he’s spotted them having a couple quiet, intense discussions about, he assumes, how best to take care of them all. John’s got a gunshot wound of his own, one to his left leg—not that it’s dissuaded him from refusing to move so much as three feet away from Harold in any direction. They finally had to move them to the living room, Harold on the couch, John on the adjacent recliner, in order to get him to actually take it easy. Harold’s injuries are minor in comparison, but Nathan doesn’t have to be a rocket science to know John blames himself. He just has to have eyes.

Nathan and Grace have been deputized by Jessica to help her with whatever she needs—Michael is busy working his ass off making sure their safe house stays safe, triple-reassuring that they’re still off the radar. He hasn’t seen Root since all hell broke loose—fitting, of course—but he knows she’s been here, because every so often their supplies spontaneously replenish themselves. There’s only one person who could manage to slip in and out undetected, especially with Bear around, and not raise any alarms.

Right now, Jessica’s taking a well-deserved break, so Nathan’s doing the rounds, as it were—Harold and Grace are right now successfully ganging up on John and making him eat something, so he heads to Sam’s room to see how she’s doing. The door is only ajar, which is unusual—Sam generally prefers to leave it open, and he realizes once he’s close enough that she’s not alone.

He can hear Root’s laugh, the way it never _quite_ sounds sincere, and Sam replying something in her typical matter-of-fact way. There’s a pause that seems pointed, and he decides to knock gently on the door after a moment. 

“Yeah?”

Nathan pushes the door open. Sam looks nonchalant about Root sitting on the foot of her bed. Root herself smiles and flutters her eyelashes at him, which he ignores—that’s Root. “Jessica’s taking a nap, so she tasked me with checking on everyone. You need anything?”

“Well, if you’re taking requests,” Root says brightly, and Sam shoots her a look.

“I’m good,” she says. “How’s my idiot partner doing?”

By that, she means John—he’s noticed he’s the only one she refers to as her partner that way. “As we speak, Harold and Grace are convincing him he still needs to eat.”

“Poor puppy,” says Root, faux-sympathetically. “Suffering from a nasty case of separation anxiety, huh?” 

“Well,” Nathan drawls, amused, “you’re not actually wrong.” He looks directly at her, adding, “By the way—thanks for the supplies. They’ve come in handy.”

She waves a hand airily, standing. “The Machine knew you would need them.”

“The Machine didn’t bring them to us. _You_ did,” he says, and he watches her cycle through all the ways she can respond to that—there’s the way she is with John, all dismissals and putdowns, or with Harold, coy and mocking, with Michael and Grace, mysterious and knowing, or with Sam, flirtatious, dangerous, alluring. He wonders if it’s a coincidence that she mostly tries to avoid him and Jessica. “That’s why I’m thanking _you_.”

Root meets his eyes for a brief moment, not long, but enough that he sees a spark of—something, something like genuine warmth, before it’s gone, swallowed up by another one of her not-quite-right little laughs. “ _Someone_ has to keep an eye on the kindergartners when they tromp outside to play.” She moves toward the door, adding, “I’ll be in touch,” just before she disappears out into the hallway.

“Kindergartners, huh?” he says to Sam, amused. He can see her guard’s up, and his tone helps relax it some.

“Apparently we all pale in comparison to her genius, or something. Except for Harold.”

“It was more, I thought the two of you had moved on to considerably more adult topics,” he says, giving her a shit-eating grin, and he knows he’s damn lucky that she can’t get out of bed right now.


	5. Elias/Anthony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave me alone. I am still firmly in the 'denial' stage. =P

There’s a mob boss and his favorite henchman sitting in his living room.

Nathan supposes that’s only partially accurate. For one, they’re not both sitting; the man previously known among their group as _Scarface_ but who has an actual name, _Anthony_ , is actually lying down on the couch after nearly being blown up. He is, shockingly enough, managing to sleep, and Carl Elias, the man who ruthlessly and efficiently rules New York’s underground, is watching him not just attentively, but _carefully_ , as if he’s worried he’ll break him further if he so much as glances at him wrong.

For two, ‘favorite henchman’ clearly doesn’t come close to the full depth of Elias’ feelings for this man. 

He passes through the living room quietly, meets Elias’ eyes and asks him with a look if he needs anything; the answer is a quick shake of the head, and then Elias is back to watching his second like Nathan never even existed in the first place. He finds Harold and John in the kitchen and inclines his head back toward the living room, asking, “So what’s that story?”

Harold and John fill him in on the details, and Nathan nods along as he makes himself a cup of coffee. Harold’s portion of the story gets testier when he covers the part where John put himself at considerable risk in order to save Anthony, and John merely gives him the mildest of looks in response. Nathan, for his part, just shrugs. “If you really want him as an ally, Harold, I think John did the right thing. John’s saved Elias’ life before, and he appreciated it, but I think that was it. You want a man’s gratitude, you save his life. You want a man’s loyalty, you save what he loves.”

Harold blinks owlishly, as only he can, and Nathan pointedly glances at John, raising an eyebrow. Harold’s expression eventually turns contemplative before he clears his throat and changes the subject. 

Nathan takes that opportunity to meet John’s eyes, and he nods, once, and John’s posture relaxes, just a little bit.

Harold may be a genius, Nathan thinks, but there are some things the rest of them understand so much better than he does.


End file.
